It really depends on what part of the country you're trying to get at job at.

40k is alot of money for someone with out exp. You're realistically going to be looking at something somewhere around 30k, most likely less. The truth is there's just too much competition out there. And people are lining up who will do what you do as good if not better than you do it for half the price of what you would do it for.

40k is a good number if you are very good. It could be less if you still have some weaknesses.
As for the competition, I don't really see any competition. Sure, a lot of people want to be game artists but only a few are talented enough.

Black fish is EXACTLY right . So many people want to be game artists and few have the talent/effort to really make it . If you do make it you deserve a decent salery though , 40K is reasonable for a starting artist , but play commando for about your first 5 years cause if you stay at the same company you wont make any money

Jesus do so many want to get in the game industry .
i agree its not that hard if your good , there are way to few good
designers . but way to many who want to get into the industry.

personally i see studious getting a lot smaller , and sub contracting or buying in work . rather than have a designer sat in your studio it is way easier using the services
of model making companies , and way way cheaper by half . these cheap and reliable companies will be used more and studios will get smaller .
so in the future aspiring modelers will not work at a games studio but perhaps for some model making company.
like in the movie industry were you hire props , you will get companies making 3D models and they will be bought for the film or game industry , this makes way
more sense and will be cheaper and quicker for studious , i think model making companies will be so various that i don't think the modelers will be getting huge
salaries .
The games will revolve around game A . I and complex story lines rather than the graphical as they are now .

(
sub note - you can get a game character modelled rigged texed and animated for around a 1000 dollars , from a modelling studio i know of and finished within the
week , damn that's a lot less trouble than hiring a designer - quicker and cheaper: D )

taken from the companys page
Custom 3D Models
All custom model work is charged at the rate of USD $50.00 per hour. As a general rule of thumb, the average model requires approximately 8 hours for polygon construction, and 8 hours for texture mapping. This does not include animation. Attaching the model to a biped for use in character studio will require an addition 6 hours (approximately). Facial expressions can take significantly longer depending on how complicated they need to be. Animations of the character walking, running, jumping (etc) can take additional hours if the animation is required to be unique, otherwise canned generic animations can be applied. Please click on the Model Quote link for a quote to fit your specific needs. Using an existing model as a base will significantly decrease the time.

Surely that's for Unwrapping the model and not the skin? I feel that I'm relatively fast for the quality of work I produce but there is no way I could ever completely skin a character in 8 hours and be satisfied with it. It takes me about 20-30 hours (roughly 3 days). What is the regular speed of others in this forum and when does speed come at the cost of quality?

Bobo I don't know what that guy is talking about . It takes me at least 8-10 hrs just to set up the UV's and then another 30-40 hrs to skin a character ( yes your much faster then me ) and that is only if I have all the textures I am going to need and it does not need a whole lot of special texturing . On some of the more recent models I have been working on which need special bump mapping and lots of work with hair it has taken me about a week 40-50 hrs of texturing alone !

I would really like to see some examples of someone who can UV&skin a character in 1-2 days and it not look like dog shit :shame:

Hmmm my own personal tex speed it varies on what i am doing .
anywhere from 5 to 30 level textures a day depending on the texture . id say 10 a day on average . but when i started about 4 years ago it would take me a whole
day to do 1 texture .

For model skinning . i could do a skin in a day . The hard part is aligning it correctly , though with the vertex bake tut from bobo has helped a lot , thanks for that it
will take the sting out of a tricky job.

As for the point i was trying to make many studios use royalty free sound effects textures ect . It is not unknown rather than starting from scratch. it is only a matter of
time till this reaches the game models . or services start that offer custom modelling .

As games advance the polycount increases , one day the gaming industry will be graphically capable of the film industry visuals . So i believe that many companies will
start offering models for the gaming industry it would not make finical and time sense to have all the models made within the gaming company . Can you imagine
having to make all the hundreds of prefab decoration objects for a game of the future
i am just drawing the point that it seems we have one such company starting to jump on the band wagon here .

I think we are moving away from the original post here , the original post was what is the right figure for salaries within the gaming industry .
It might be a good idea to see how the salaries vary from company to company and from the different positions and experiences of designers.

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